Tag Archives: roundabouts

Welcome to my traditional, well it is the fourth after all, annual review of my social media and science communication activities. I have had another enjoyable year blogging and tweeting, and as I wrote last year, I have absolutely no plans to stop either. You may also be pleased to know that pictures of roundabouts will continue to appear at irregular intervals 🙂

I have continued to post at about ten-day intervals; this is my 142nd post. The more I write the easier it seems to become. I also did my first jointly authored post, teaming up with Anne Hilborn (@AnneWHilborn) to ask if naming study animals introduced observational bias which generated a fair bit of interest and was published in a slightly modified form in the on-line magazine Biosphere. Another of my blog articles was converted into a discussion piece for the journal Agricultural & Forest Entomology (see February 2017 issue) and my blogging activities resulted in me being asked to do an article about roundabouts and their biodiversity for the summer newsletter of the International Association for Landscape Ecology. For those of you who think that social media has no place in science, I feel that this is pretty convincing evidence that science communication via social media is a very worthwhile use of our time.

I had visitors from 164 countries (150 last year) and received 34 036 views (29 385 last year). As last year, the majority of my readers

The top ten countries for views in 2016

came form the UK and USA, although Sweden and The Netherlands made it into the top ten, pushing Spain into the wilderness.

Top reads

My top post (excluding my home page) in 2016 was one of my entomological classics, the Moericke Trap, closely followed by A Winter’s Tale – Aphid Overwintering, although my all-time winner is still Not All Aphids are Vegans with over 5 000 views. My top ten posts tend to be either about aphids or entomological techniques/equipment which I guess means that I am filling an entomological niche. I was however, disappointed to see that one of my favourite posts about (to me at any rate) the inspirational paper by Mike Way and Mike Cammell on using aphid egg counts to predict crop damage is languishing in the bottom ten, despite being published in September 2015 😦

Comparative statistics

One of the things that I find somewhat frustrating with blogging is the difficulty of gathering comparative data. It may be the scientist in me or perhaps I am just too competitive, but as WordPress kindly supply their users with personal statistics, I feel the need to know how others are doing. It is surprisingly hard to get these sort of data although this site is useful if you are hoping to use your blog for generating an income. I was very excited a few weeks ago when my blog reached over 100 000 views at beginning of December. Just a few days later Dynamic Ecology announced their 1 00 000 unique visitor which certainly put me in my place! They have, however, been around a while and post much more frequently than I do, so are perhaps not the best yardstick, although of course something to aspire to. Luckily, Jeff Ollerton who has been blogging about a year longer than me and in a similar subject area, is as obsessed with blogging statistics as I am and very kindly gave me access to his data. Looking at the data it seems that we arrived at the same point

Comparative statistics between my blog and that of Jeff Ollerton’s Biodiversity Blog.

after the same amount of time but in different ways. Jeff had a much slower start than me and his stats are best described using a curvilinear relationship whereas my line is still a straightforward linear relationship. I guess that as I was on Twitter when I launched my blog that I immediately picked up more views than Jeff who only joined the Twitter fraternity a month or so ago. It will be interesting to see if his readership curve steepens in the coming months and if mine continues to rise linearly, plateau or (hopefully) take-off as Jeff’s did.

Tweeting for entomology

In terms of Tweeting I had a really great experience curating the Real Scientists Twitter account @realscientists. It kept me very busy but I interacted with a whole new set of people and had some really interesting conversations. I can heartily recommend it to anyone who is considering volunteering. I had hoped to hit the 5 000 follower milestone before the end of the year but didn’t quite make it, ending the year with 4 960 instead which is according to my children, pretty good for a normal person 🙂

Many thanks to all my readers and especially to those who take the time to comment as well as pressing the like button. My top commenters, as indeed they were last year, were Emma Maund, Emily Scott, Emma Bridges, Jeff Ollerton, Amelia from A French Garden and Philip Strange. I look forward to interacting with you all in 2017. A Happy and Prosperous New Year to you all.

My week on Realscientists was a direct result of National Insect Week, a biennial event organised by the Royal Entomological Society (RES) to bring the wonders of entomology to a wider audience*. I had never thought about being a curator for Realscientists although I have followed them for some time. Back in February however, one of my PhD students who has been involved with National Insect Week on more than one occasion, suggested that I might apply to curate RealScientists during National Insect Week as the RES Director of Outreach, Luke Tilley, was hoping to be on Biotweeps during National Insect Week as well. To make sure that I had no excuse to forget to do it, she very helpfully sent me the link to the Realscientists web site and instructions on how to apply 🙂

Duly briefed, I contacted Realscientists and to my surprise and slight apprehension, was given the slot I had asked for, the week beginning 19th June. As my curatorial stint drew closer I began to worry about what I was going to tweet about and how to fit it into my day-to-day activities.

I made a list of twenty pre-planned Tweets to give me an outline script to work from. I managed to include all but one into my week as curator, the one about why you should want to work in entomology.

The twenty tweet list

I felt that my whole week was addressing this point so there was no need to belabour the point any more. I also received an email from Realscientists with a Vade Mecum of how and what to tweet. I was somewhat concerned by the section on how to deal with trolling, but I needn’t have worried, as far as I could tell I received no overt abuse**.

The big day approached, which as my actual launch was at Sunday lunchtime caused some slight logistical problems, but easily solved by making lunch a bit later than usual. As it was a Sunday I basically kept it light, introduced myself and tweeted a few insect factoids and pictures, including some great images from van Bruyssels The Population of an Old Pear Tree. I have my own hard copy of the 1868 translated edition, but if you want to read it on-line it is available here.

From van Bruyssel – The Population of an Old Pear Tree

It is definitely worth a read.

I also had to make a decision about how much time I was going to spend Tweeting. The previous curator had only done about 10-15 tweets a day, which is what I usually do. The curator before her, however, had done considerably more. As my stint as curator coincided with National Insect Week and as my contract with my university does actually specify that I do outreach***, I felt that I could justify several hours a day to it and that is what I did, and managing to fit quite a bit of the day job in between.

In between tweeting images and fantastic insect facts I tried to get some important messages across to my audience. I started with what some might term a “conservation rant”, basically bemoaning the fact that although insects make up the majority of the animal kingdom, conservation research and funding is very much biased toward the vertebrates, largely those with fur and feathers. I also pointed out that most statements about how we should go about conservation in general is based on this unbalanced and not very representative research. Taxonomic chauvinism has annoyed my for a long time 🙂

That rant over I introduced my audience to the work our research group does, biological control, chemical ecology, integrated pest management, agro-ecology and urban ecology and conservation. Our use of fluorescent dust and radio tagging to understand insect behaviour aroused a lot of interest and comment.

Using alternative technology to understand vine weevil behaviour.

The glow in the dark sycamore aphid was also very popular

Midweek I translated one of my outreach talks to Twitter and in a frenzy of Tweets introduced the world to Bracknell and the biodiversity to be found on its roundabouts and how an idea of how to teach locally relevant island biogeography and conservation, turned into a 12 year research project.

How teaching led research – the Bracknell roundabout story.

In between these two main endeavours, I tweeted about the influences that entomology has had on art, literature, popular culture, religion, medicine, engineering, advertising, economics, medicine , fashion and even advertising, using a variety of images.

Our new insect-inspired smoke detector attracted a lot of love and envy.

I even composed a haiku for the occasion

Six-legged creatures;

Fascinating and diverse,

Beautiful insects

I have been an entomologist for a long time.

and told the story of my life-long love of insects, incidentally revealing some of my past hair-styles and exposing my lack of interest in sartorial elegance 🙂

My overall message for the week was, and hopefully I got this across, is that we should be much

more aware of what is under our feet and surrounding us and of course, that aphids are not just fantastic insects

My final tweet

but also beautiful animals.

Model Myzus persicae that I recently met in the Natural History Museum

And finally, would I do it again? Yes most definitely. I ‘met’ a lot of new and very interesting people and had some really good ‘conversations’.

Unbelievably yet another year has gone by which means that I have managed to complete three years of blogging at Don’t Forget the Roundabouts writing articles at about ten-day intervals. This post will be my 105th since I started blogging on January 1st 2013. I have written over 15 000 words about aphids and another 31 000 words on other entomologically related subjects ; so at least one book if I can get around to linking the various posts into a coherent form 🙂 My views on the usefulness of blogging at a personal level and in terms of science communication remain as positive as ever and I fully intend to continue blogging for the foreseeable future. At this time last year last year I summarised my facts and figures in terms of views and international reach. This year I have decided to ‘borrow’ an idea from three of the blogs I follow, Scientist Sees Squirrel, Small Pond Science and The Lab and Field and speculate about some of the search terms that direct people to my site.

So first the bare facts, I reached 150 countries (145 last year) and received 29 385 views

Top nine countries for views during 2015

(24 616 last year) and as yet the figures seem to suggest that I will continue to gain more views during 2016, but it is only a simple regression and a pessimist might see a plateau appearing 🙂

My top post, as last year, was Not All Aphids are Vegans closely followed by A Winter’s Tale – Aphid Overwintering both with over a thousand views. So how do people find me, which search terms do they use? As you might expect the most frequently used search terms are those that ask do aphids bite people (humans)? In fact most of the search terms that plonk people down on my blog are aphid related. Jiminy Cricket also turns up a lot; this is because of one of my very early posts in which I pointed out that Jiminy Cricket should really be Gregory Grasshopper. On the other hand, some people do actually search for me and my site specifically. There are, however, some weird and wonderful search terms that send people my way, a few of which are worth commenting on.

Do police dogs follow the scent of fear? An easy one to start with, this directed the searcher to my post on aphid alarm pheromone, which will of course, not have answered her/his question.

These two are obviously linked to the name of my blog.

Who are the roundabouts in Pinocchio? I didn’t know that roundabouts featured in Pinocchio but Jiminy Cricket certainly does 🙂 On reflection this may have been a misspelling of roustabouts, in reference to the two villains who kidnapped Pinocchio.

Why were roundabouts so big back in the day? An intriguing question to which I have no answer.

This one takes the prize for the most specific set of terms entered.

What is the name of the male group of entomologists that is the oldest group in the world and has recently invited Dr Helen Roy to become a member? – the answer is of course The Entomological Club.

I was extremely flattered that Google directed this inquirer to my blog 🙂

Where is the latest global discourse in entomology?

Obviously all my trips to Paris and France have upped my international profile,

article sur aphis nerii et ses parasitoides

but these are pretty obscure to say the least!

her wellies got sloppy pictures, but probably (s)he meant soppy? so here you are

it’s raining get coat and umbrella study module to get a first in exam results

what is a milligram? I have no idea how that ended up on my site and as for this one?

joni printed 50 pages, then he took a pair of scissors and carefully cut 300 tag and signed all of them

And finally a couple of X-rated ones:

why girls bum sap changes having sex? I’m guessing that (s)he meant shape – being directed to an article about aphids ingesting phloem sap must have been a bit deflating!

video sex girls avenae this one must have really been disappointed but if (s)he comes this way again (s)he might like to watch this video produced by the Silwood Revue which is well worth a view https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sBzNsaSzdM

I could go on, but enough is enough, and the rest are mainly aphid related.

If three years can be construed as a tradition then this is my traditional holiday blog post! This year we spent three weeks in Catalan France, in the Pyrénées-Orientales. We have usually travelled south by putting our car on the train and having a relaxing and interesting overnight journey letting the train take the strain. Unfortunately there seems to be a conspiracy against motor-railers and yet another of our train options was closed this year. As I like to bring back a few bottles of wine with me, the hire-car option is not very attractive. We thus had to do the ferry and drive option. We caught the ferry from Portsmouth on a Friday night and arrived early the next morning in Caen.

We were then faced with the long drive to Maureillas-las-Illas, a small town close to the Spanish border. We split the journey in half and spent the night in a very picturesque B&B run by an aged Italian lady in a tiny village in the Charente-Maritime,

not far from the town of Saint-Genis-de-Saintonge, near Pons, which had rather an unusual roundabout which I immediately added to my collection 😉

Pons itself was a rather nice little town which just happened to be having a medieval fete when we arrived.

We eventually arrived at Maureillas-las-Illas and were then faced with a 20 minute drive up a single track mountain road to Las Illas and finally up a dirt track to our holiday villa in Super Las Illas (a seven minute walk from the Spanish border) where we to be based for the next three weeks.

There was of course a pool, with a lovely view, although given that we were at 900 m, it was not the warmest pool we have ever

experienced even on a sunny day J

In terms of wildlife, it was not as prolific as some places we have stayed, although the pool collected the usual suicidal millipedes, Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera and even some grasshoppers and the odd shield bug or two. I also rescued a small lizard which then seemed to become very attached to me, at one stage even taking refuge in my hair.

There were the usual impossible to photograph humming-bird hawk moths and numerous swallowtails

which I did manage to snap. I also discovered that one of my favourite entomological shirts was a great hoverfly attractant, although despite the design, did not fool any of the butterflies.

We were not far from Ceret, which we had visited five years ago and were happy to renew our acquaintance with its narrow streets, Picasso fountain and many cafés.

We also came across this street celebrating Charles De Gaulle’s exhortation to the French people in 1940, although I was saddened to see that vandals had been at work, albeit appositely.

We also visited Amelie-les-Bains and Prats de Mollo La Preste, the former apparently famous for urinary tract cures! In Prats we saw

multi-storey graves and also a great painting of one of the gates of the old walled town on a house opposite the actual gate

Unusually we only had one trip to the coast, Port Vendres where we enjoyed a sunny morning and a very long lunch.

On our return to the villa we might have been forgiven for thinking that we had somehow been transported back to an English autumn.

We also we went to Vernet-les-Bains and surrounding areas, looking at potential places to retire. We knocked quite a few houses off the possible to buy list; it is amazing how different the pictures that estate agents put on their sites are from the real thing. It was nice to be in Vernet again, although once again Gill found the hilly streets a bit tough going.

Since our last visit the old communal lavoir has been very nicely restored both externally and internally.

Vernet also has a nice arboretum scattered through the town and parks, so you often come across signs like this. I was pleased to see that one of my favourite trees (Prunus padus, bird cherry) gets a mention.

We also visited Elne a very pretty sleepy little town with a small cathedral. Nearby we found a nice artist’s centre where we had lunch and a local artisanal Catalan beer,

and for the entomologists, some horse-chestnut leaf miner damage

Gorges de la Fou is well worth a visit and as well as being geologically impressive, is also signed botanically.

It turned out that the obligatory safety hats were made in the UK.

We also visited Thuir – mainly famous for Byrrh (but they also prepare and bottle other fortified aromatic wines including Cinzano, Ambassadeur, Vabe and Dubonnet). Unfortunately the tour didn’t have any manufacturing going on but there were free samples at the end, which as a responsible driver was a little frustrating.

We visited Perpignan a couple of times. Both times we were blessed with lovely hot sunny weather. Plenty of canal side cafes, the castle of the Kings of Majorca is worth a visit, with great views from the top, although a bit of a climb to get there.

We also came across these giant flower pots which is certainly an interesting way to grow urban trees.

Closer to home was the Cork museum in Maureillas-las-Illas . It is very interesting although quite small, and even if you watch the video and visit the shop, where I bought a cork post card, the visit is easily done within an hour. I really liked the mini-sculptures in cork depicting the making of cork. There were also examples of cork ark and furniture.

And of course, not forgetting the biggest cork in the world.

On Day One of our marathon motorway trip on our way back to catch the ferry we stopped at the most fantastic motorway service station (Aire) ever – jazz band, environmental messages, great gift shop, a restaurant, a cafeteria, and a sandwicherie, plus lots of water (it was on the Canal du Midi). Perhaps our motorway service areas could take a lesson from Vinci.

We broke our return journey in the Charente-Maritime again, this time staying in a glorious B&B in Forges. Nearby was the town of Surgeres which provided me with yet another roundabout for my collection.

The next morning, as La Rochelle was not far way, we took the opportunity to have coffee there and to do a bit of sight-seeing. A very picturesque place indeed and it would have been nice if we could have stopped longer. It is now on our list of places to come and revisit.

We left La Rochelle late morning and continued our trip towards Caen, where we arrived in the early evening with plenty of time to do a bit of sight-seeing. We came across this very shiny statue of Joan of Arc. We then sat in the sun at the head of the canal and had a very good dinner.

Then sadly, it was off to the ferry port to wait to be allowed to board as the sun set on our holiday ;-(

Post script

This year we invested in Télépéage, which allowed us to sail through the toll booths on the motorways instead of queuing and scrabbling for the right money – well worth the investment.

Although I have recently written about my two years of blogging and tweeting, I couldn’t resist the temptation to begin 2015 with a quick round-up of 2014 on Don’t Forget the Roundabouts.

A gratuitous roundabout – collected summer 2014 Hook of Holland on our way back from our summer holiday.

According to the statistics provided by WordPress, I reached 145 countries (112 in 2013), and received about 24 000 views (14 349 in 2013).

Once again my most viewed post was Not All Aphids are Vegans with my post about saving UK plant sciences in second place. I continue to be surprised at how many people appear (or think that they have) to be bitten by aphids. In all my years of working with aphids I have only been probed (bitten, stung) twice. Looking at the distribution of hits for the post though it does seem to reflect the times of year when aphids are most active.

This post is obviously filling a need as the number of views has more than doubled since last year.

An innovation for 2014 was my series on entomological classics, mainly equipment, but I also included Southwood’s 1961 paper under that heading. This coming year I will continue much as before, posts about aphids, more entomological classics (look out for yellow water traps next), the odd rant or two and a new series on those scientific papers and authors that have really inspired me over the years.

I would really like to have more comments and interactions via the blog; at the moment Twitter is where most exchanges occur. It would also be nice if everyone who followed me on Twitter read my blog! That said I must acknowledge my most frequent commenters and bestowers of likes. These are Emily Scott http://adventuresinbeeland.com/, Jeff Ollerton http://jeffollerton.wordpress.com/, Amelia from A French Garden, and Emma Tennant http://missapismellifera.com/. I am also very grateful to the 135 people who subscribe to my blog. Many thanks to you all for your interest and kind words.

Exactly a year ago (January 1st 2013), and with some trepidation, I launched my blog, Don’t Forget the Roundabouts. I recently wrote about why I joined Twitter, https://simonleather.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/why-i-joined-the-twitterati-blogs-tweets-talks-making-entomology-visible/ and concluded that it had been a worthwhile and educational experience. So how about the blog? To me this was even scarier than going on to Twitter. It took me some time to come up with a title, and I finally opted for the one you see above this post. This celebrates my interest in urban ecology, my fascination with the architecture, decoration and biodiversity of roundabouts in general

So what have I learnt from blogging? Well, not everyone finds aphids as interesting as I do, but I will continue to plug away at trying to convince you all that aphids really are the greatest insect group in the world 😉 That said, my most popular post was about aphids, https://simonleather.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/desperately-seeking-sources-the-quest-for-the-original-citation/ found mainly by people using the search term, ‘do aphids bite people’ and looking at the traffic data it shows a fairly good correlation with the times that aphids are likely to be most abundant, although I am not convinced that they are all out there biting people.

I have published 39 posts, reached people in 112 countries, with the top ten being dominated by the English-speaking countries of the world, and

had over 14,000 views with an average of 39 per day and sixty people subscribe to my blog as official followers.

My most viewed day was 451, won by my recent blog on joining the Twitterati. My ambition is to have a post that is actually read by all my followers on Twitter! My two most frequent commenters and bestowers of likes are Emily Heath http://adventuresinbeeland.com/ and Jeff Ollerton http://jeffollerton.wordpress.com/. My most frequent referrer was Chris Buddle http://arthropodecology.com/

My thanks and best wishes to them all, and of course, to all my other readers and followers. I would really like feedback from all of you to help me improve my efforts during 2014.

Last week (3rd-6th September) I attended ENTO13 the joint International Symposium and Annual National Science meeting of the Royal Entomological Society.

The symposium, Thirty years of Thornhill & Alcock: The Evolution of Insect Mating Systems, brought together an eclectic group of entomologists to discuss sperm, genitalia and strange and diverse mating habits. I have to say that some of the genitalia shown were very impressive, one insect penis even having articulated jaws hidden among all the other nasty looking spines adorning it. Who would want to be a female insect was, I imagine, the thought that crossed the mind of many, if not all, of the audience. But I’m not here to talk about sex, or even rock and roll. What I am going to do is to reflect on the differences between this conference and the one I attended a couple of weeks before, INTECOL2013. INTECOL2013, held in the ExCel, London had about 3000 ecological delegates from around the world representing a huge diversity of interests. ENTO13, based at the sea-side University of St
Andrews, had about 150 delegates, many of whom were specialists in insect reproductive strategies but also an equal number

of entomologists ranging from pest managers to lepidopterists and from PhD students to those who had cut their entomological teeth in the 1950s and ‘60s. For me and my accompanying PhD student, Francisca Sconce and co-driver, this meant a car journey of about 6½ hours, luckily in a very comfortable, apparently ecological car, a Hyundai i30 Blue which took us all the way there and back on one tank of diesel, with according to the fancy display, another 100 miles in reserve.

The accommodation in Agnes Blackadder Hall was pretty palatial, with double beds, en-suite facilities and a television. Things have certainly changed since I was a student in undergraduate accommodation at the University of Leeds in the mid-1970s.

The programme started on the 4th with the sessions up until the very nice lunches, being the symposium, and after-lunch sessions being the presentations associated with the national meeting. For those interested, the symposium speakers included Göran Arnqvist (Uppsala), Boris Baer (University of Western Australia), Bruno Buzatto (Western Australia), John Hunt (Exeter), Hanna Kokko (ANU), Trish Moore (Georgia), Ben Normark (UMASS), Mike Richie (St Andrews), Leigh Simmons (Western Australia), Per Smiseth (Edinburgh), Rhonda Snook (Sheffield) and Nina Wedell (University of Exeter). Some of the speakers had known Randy Thornville and John Alcock, others were in utero or not even a twinkle in the eye, when the famous book appeared in 1983.

The afternoon speakers ranged in subject area from agro-ecology, sexual selection and in my case, social media and entomology. Unlike INTECOL2013, where I spent an equal amount of time between talks and roaming the poster hall, I managed to attend a full set of talks each day, except for one that I missed by accident. So a full, varied and very interesting programme. I have to say that having only two concurrent sessions made it a lot easier to make decisions; a definite advantage that smaller conferences have over bigger ones.

I mentioned the delegate badges at INTECOL2013, giving them a definite thumbs-up, so it is only fair that I mention the ENTO13 ones. They were not large, but the font was a good size and both sides of the badge had our names on, so it didn’t matter if they twizzled round during the day.

Delegates as I have already intimated, ranged from those of us who can remember the 1970s to those who had heard of the 1970s from their parents. It was also heartening to see how many of the younger entomologists present were female. For me, it was also great to see how many of the students that I had taught on the MSc Entomology course, originally at Silwood Park and now

at Harper Adams University, were talking, exhibiting posters or just in attendance. It was great to see old friends, some like Darryl Gwynne, whom I have known for over 20 years via email, but had never met, and to meet and talk to many others. I didn’t get to talk to all the delegates, but unlike INTECOL2013, I did manage to see everyone that I had intended to.

At the very nice conference dinner, where our starter was a very nice mini haggis, neeps and tattie confection, our President Jeremy Thomas, gave a mercifully short speech and allowed Fellows to sign the Obligation Book, if they had not already done so.

For those not immersed in the arcane lore of the Royal Entomological Society, the Obligations Book is signed by newly elected Fellows the first time that they are at meeting where the book is present. As the book very rarely leaves London, it is sometimes several years before a Fellow actually signs the book and accepts the obligations placed on him or her, as a member of the Society. The really thrilling thing about the Obligations Book is that as well as being signed twice by Queen Victoria, once as Princess Victoria when she became the Patron of the Society, it also contains the signatures of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. This meeting was the second time that the book had been in Scotland, the first time being back in April 1984 at a meeting organised by Allan Watt and myself in Edinburgh. It brought back memories to see our signatures preserved for posterity, although my signature over the years has deteriorated seriously and now no longer resembles the one in the book.

Being in Scotland, there was of course the obligatory ceilidh after the conference dinner. As I was speaking the next day, I had only one dance and one swift dram of the Macallan.

My talk, first one after lunch on the last day of the conference, not exactly a prime-time slot, was all about why I began to Tweet and Blog, and will be the subject of a future post. Speaking of Twitter, ENTO13 was not as Tweet-enabled as INTECOL2013, but a small, but dedicated band of tweeters summarised every talk throughout the conference and we engaged “Tweetisitors”, not only from the UK but Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.

Overall, ENTO13 was a thoroughly enjoyable and informative conference and I would like to thank the Royal Entomological Society and the symposium organisers for providing me the opportunity to re-visit St Andrews and to meet so many interesting entomologists.

Post script

I also managed to add a new roundabout to my collection – this double just outside the university, the big one with appropriately enough, Scots pine trees, the other with various exotics.

I have just had the opportunity to take some photographs of what used to be the most biodiverse roundabout in Bracknell, the Sports Centre Roundabout. Just before Christmas I reported that there had been a large number of trees and shrubs felled, many of them native, reducing what was a very heterogeneous habitat to a much more uniform one. You can see the before and after pictures below.

Sports Centre Roundabout

It is a shame that it is winter and that the leaves have fallen, but I think that you can get the picture. it is particularly sad as we have recently published a paper showing that native trees are particularly useful on roundabouts for both insects and birds (Helden et al., 2012).

Roundabouts or traffic circles as they are known in some parts of the world, are a common feature of modern life. They can range greatly in size; some are big enough to house small communities such as the Shepherd & Flock roundabout on the outskirts of Farnham, Surrey, which has it’s own pub,

whilst others are simple grass covered circles, such as the one shown below on the outskirts of Bracknell, Berkshire. Others, even if lacking pubs, may have a mixture of different plants present, some even with mature trees on them, such as the Sports Centre roundabout also in Bracknell.

Traditionally, roundabouts have been thought of as simple devices to regulate the flow of traffic and were usually circular raised areas of tarmac, stone, concrete or brick. More recently however, town and city councils began to add plants and/or artwork. Some of my favourites in this latter category are found in southern France as shown below or in the title picture of my blog site.

Ecologically speaking however, roundabouts are even more interesting. For almost fifteen years, I and a number of my students, from undergraduate to post-graduate, have been investigating the ecology of roundabouts and other green spaces in the town of Bracknell, Berkshire. What started as a purely pedagogic exercise (Leather & Helden, 2005a), turned into a voyage of discovery and a realisation that roundabouts are, and can be, great sources of biodiversity (Helden & Leather, 2004), and in addition, could perhaps act as nature reserves (Leather & Helden, 2005b). With close attention to mowing regimes (Helden & Leather, 2004) and increasing the proportion of native trees and other plants on them, it is not only insect diversity that is enhanced, but birds also (Helden et al., 2012).

We have found that roundabouts behave very similarly to biogeographical islands, i.e. the bigger they are and the more diverse the habitats present, the more diverse and interesting the fauna that can be found on them. For example, we found the rare and endangered bug (Hemiptera) Gonocerus acuteangulatus, alive and well on one of the roundabouts and amusingly, another species, Athysanus argentarius, usually found in coastal locations. Perhaps the salt from winter gritting operations fooled it.

Roundabouts may not be the equivalent of tropical forests but, they and other urban features such as suburban gardens, as demonstrated by Kevin Gaston and colleagues in a series of ground-breaking papers arising from the BUGS project http://www.bugs.group.shef.ac.uk/ in Sheffield and Jennifer Owen in her 30-year study of her Leicester garden (Owen, 2010), are immensely valuable tools for enhancing and conserving biodiversity in our increasingly impoverished world. We have much more to report, from bees, to butterflies and even woodlice. Watch this space for future instalments.

Welcome to the lounge, where entomologists and insect enthusiasts can relax, grab a cup and put on a nice music. Step out of your day job, and step into your zone, where you reconnect with your passion for insects and enrich yourself with more knowledge.